Other Activities

TO PROMOTE THE CULTURE OF MUSIC:

LeBAM also conducts a number of other activities that are important, both to improve the quality of the main activities of LeBAM students, but also to promote the culture of music generally in Lebanon.

a. Develop the LeBAM Public Music Library as the repository of all its valuable teaching and performing resources. This library currently includes about 4000 materials, made available to the public in the Sin el Fil CLAC.

This library includes teaching method books, music for performances in a variety of music ensembles, orchestras and bands, books about music, school music teaching books, audio and video teaching materials. LeBAM will work ever to develop it with more books and material from varying sources.

This library was made possible by the generous donations through Dr. Gene Aitken of Belwin Music Editors and other US based charities.

This library, now called the LeBAM Public Music Library is open to the public in the Sin el Fil CLAC. A catalogue of the Library is published on the LeBAM website.

By agreement with the Sin el Fil Municipality, in June 2013, it was officially inaugurated in the presence of the Ministers of Culture and Education in addition to the Director of the National Conservatoire and the Mayor of Sin el Fil.

b. Organize and run annually the International Summer Band Camp (ISBC),

The ISBC is a unique 9 full days of teaching and performing band music, as an advanced tool for musical education, open to non-LeBAM music students, teachers and conductors drawn from Lebanon and the neighboring Arab region. LeBAM was successful in organizing four ISBCs since 2009 in Beit Mery and Baskinta; The 2013 ISBC held on the campus of the Notre Dame University in Zouk Mosbeh, included a record 250 participants. Such camp is supposedly unique in Lebanon and the Middle East.

The ISBC attracts students from all over Lebanon and has become a major opportunity for music learning and performance. It is also an opportunity for cross regional meetings and friendships in music.

c. Organize an Annual Festival of Bands:

LeBAM has initiated and launched in August 2011 a band festival. It featured the LeBAM Youth National Band, which played together with the Army and ISF bands that performed separately and jointly on the Nejmeh Square in Down-Town Beirut on the 14th of August.

LeBAM hopes to establish this festival as an annual activity. It will strive to broaden the number of participating bands and develop its rules to that effect. With time, this festival should become competitive, offering a price and trophy for the best performing band, and could draw visiting non-Lebanese bands.

d. Organize an annual music Solo and Ensemble Contest (SEC)

LeBAM also hopes to organize starting from 2014 a music competition for wind and percussion instruments and ensembles titled Solo and Ensemble Contest (SEC), offering a price or trophy for the best artists. This event could draw interest from participating non-Lebanese musicians, especially from the neighboring Arab countries in the Middle East.

e. Promote and assist in the mandatory teaching of music in public schools:

Realizing such goal will mostly require the development of an adapted pedagogy, method books and the training of teachers. This project is currently still in the planning phase, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and the Lebanese Center for Educational Research and Development (CERD).

This collaboration will provide this dimension of the LeBAM project with its critical expansion dimension to pedagogy development and school teaching. CERD is committed to collaborate with LeBAM's experts to develop the pedagogical tools for schools, which is within their official mandate and expertise.

This activity enjoys the full support of Lebanese Ministry of Education, which has agreed to (i) test the pedagogical tools within the pilot schools, then (ii) use them as mandatory teaching tools within the nation-wide network of Lebanese public schools. It is also expected that the pedagogical tools developed be used equally by many private schools, thus providing impact for the project to hundreds of teachers and dozens of thousands of school students in Lebanon. The best of these students will then naturally enroll in the more musically advanced LeBAM nation-wide network of Bands.